


Survivors

by serialkarma



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 05:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4613526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serialkarma/pseuds/serialkarma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I…didn’t realize you were religious,” she said, and then realized that it might sound as through she were disparaging his beliefs. “I mean, I just haven’t met many engineers who are particularly…spiritual.”</p><p>He laughed, then, with a smile that showed white, perfect teeth.</p><p>“You’d be surprised how many of us there are. Besides,” he shrugged. “I come from a religious family.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivors

The viewport was open for the first time in days, but the observation room was nearly empty. She wondered if people couldn’t bear to look at the empty blackness when they knew there was nothing but death waiting for them out there.  
  
The only other occupant of the room hadn’t seemed to notice her entrance. He was standing to the side, one shoulder leaning against the viewport. He was tall and spare -- older than her, but not significantly, fair-haired, and with that scruffy, aloof look she’d always gravitated toward. She hadn’t noticed him on board Before. Before -- it now had capital letters. From now on, all time would be designated as Before, and After. Before Them. BT. Maybe it should be BC, Before Cylons. So what would that make now? AD, for After Death? Were they dead?   
  
They might as well be. This ship was populated with ghosts, lately. Everywhere she looked, she saw someone she recognized -- or thought she did. Everyone she passed took on the likeness of a friend, a relative, someone from school. Her mind played tricks on her, showing her the faces of people she’d never have thought of if not for the slow, certain knowledge that now she’d never see them again. She saw her mother’s face, her brother’s, her best friend from childhood. Ghosts were everywhere, all around her, shuffling through the passageways with heavy steps and hollow eyes.   
  
She wondered how many dead women’s faces she’d worn for others, in the last few days.  
  
***  
  
_This is the way the world ends_ , she thought, and felt a wry smile twist her mouth. Where had that come from? Some mostly-forgotten poem, maybe, from a long-ago literature class. How did the rest of it go? Not with a whimper, but with a bang? That wasn’t quite right, but it was certainly appropriate. She wondered when she’d start to feel something. Loss. Terror. Anything but this soft, muffling abstraction.   
  
The stars in the viewport didn’t seem to move. Their ship may as well have been standing still, frozen in vacuum. She raised a hand and began tracing lines from one star to another, making up her own constellations. But none of the shapes meant anything. They weren’t real. They might seem motionless, but they weren’t, and those false constellations wouldn’t last long enough for anyone to make up stories about them. Not that there was anyone out there to listen to those stories, anymore.  
  
“Seems like we’re standing still, doesn’t it?” The sound of the soft voice brought her head off the viewport surface. It was the man she’d seen when she first came in. She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t noticed him come up by her.  
  
He gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, didn’t meant to startle you. It’s just … I haven’t really talked to anyone in days. And you looked, well…” He trailed off with a shrug of his shoulders and looked out at the stars again, leaning his shoulder against the window as he’d done before.  
  
She opened her mouth to reply, or apologize, although for what she wasn’t sure, and was startled when she had to clear her throat to get her voice working.   
  
“Yeah. Me neither,” she said with a crooked smile.   
  
***  
  
They talked about what they did Before, but not about who they’d lost. He was an engineer.  
  
“Still am, I guess.” He smiled another of those self-deprecating smiles. “I specialized in ground-to-orbit transport vehicles -- shuttles, mostly.” He had a light voice, and an odd way of drawing out his vowels as he spoke. She was surprised it didn’t bother her. “I was going to a job interview with a big firm in Caprica city. More money, better projects.” The smile slid off his face as he looked back out the viewport. His Adam’s apple bobbed once.  
  
“I was coming back from vacation with friends. I’m a -- was -- a biology professor at Caprica University. I just got tenure last semester, so we were celebrating.”  
  
How strange, she thought distractedly, to realize your entire life is now in the past tense.  
  
“Bio professor, huh? I was never much good with biology. Or people.” He huffed out a laugh. “Too messy, not enough…I don’t know. Math, I guess. Not cut-and-dried, you know? Physics, now, machines? Those I get.”  
  
She grinned. It felt strange and familiar at once. “Well, the human body is a machine, you know. Just a very complicated one. That’s how I always start out my Intro Anatomy classes.”  
  
He smiled back, and something that had been tense about him relaxed. “A machine, huh? I hadn’t thought about it like that before. That’s a good point.” He looked down at the floor and then glanced up, looking at her from under the fringe of his lashes, almost shyly. “I don’t know, though, it doesn’t seem…quite the same. I, uh, I always felt kinda…silly about this, but you know what I love best about physics?”  
  
He leaned forward a bit, like he was telling a secret, and she leaned toward him, ready to hear it.   
  
“You can see the hand of God.”  
  
***  
  
She raised her eyebrows, surprised. “I…didn’t realize you were religious,” she said, and then realized that it might sound as through she were disparaging his beliefs. “I mean, I just haven’t met many engineers who are particularly…spiritual.”  
  
He laughed, then, with a smile that showed white, perfect teeth.  
  
“You’d be surprised how many of us there are. Besides,” he shrugged. “I come from a religious family.” He leaned back onto the viewport glass, away from her. She missed the warmth his brief nearness had brought. Suddenly, it seemed as though she’d been cold for a long, long time.  
  
“Well, I’ve never thought about God much one way or the other, I suppose. I don’t really want to start now.”  
  
No, not now, when the only possible response to the question she’d heard others ask, some in anger, some in despair -- “Where was God?” was “Not here.”  
  
  
***  
  
“Do you think God had -- has -- a plan?” he asked after a short silence. He was looking at her intently. “I mean, for all this. Everything that’s happened.”  
  
“If he does, it’s a pretty shitty one.”  
  
He was quiet for a moment. Then, “Yes, I suppose it does seem like that,” he said softly.  
  
“You suppose?” Her head came off the viewport where she had rested it. “It seems like that? I don’t think there’s any ‘seems’ about it.” She was almost shocked at her sudden vehemence.  
  
He looked contrite. “I didn’t mean…I don’t want to -- ah, I don’t know what I meant.” He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck and hunched his shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry. Um. Do you want to get out of here? Maybe grab a drink?”  
  
She looked at him. His thin, slightly craggy face was friendly, wary. But kind. “All right,” she said.  
  
***  
  
The bars on board had been limiting passengers to one drink per night since they’d gotten the news. The official reason was to keep people from drowning their sorrows in alcohol, but she suspected it was also an attempt to make the supply last as long as possible. The stores were now decidedly finite.  
  
They drank their one allotted drink each, not talking much, standing at the bar of the packed saloon. He stood closer than he had in the observation room, shoulder and elbow brushing hers, not moving away. He was warm, she noted again, and her heart sped up a little. Her arm tingled where it bumped against him.  
  
When he leaned down to speak into her ear, so she could hear him over the white noise of the crowd, his breath against her neck make her shiver. When he told her he had a stash of well-aged scotch in his cabin, and suggested they go circumvent the alcohol restrictions, she refused to think twice about agreeing.  
  
***  
  
His stateroom was smaller than hers, but not by much. He left the lights dim and moved directly to the small bureau in the corner. The scotch was in a soft cloth bag in the top drawer. “It was to celebrate,” he said. “When I got the job.”  
  
“You must have been pretty confident, then,” she said, accepting the half-full glass he held out to her. She took a sip. It was excellent scotch.  
  
“Yeah, well, they’d pretty much told me I had it in the bag before I left.”  
  
“So you were -- are -- good then? At your job?” She took another sip. She thought she might be a bit nervous. On a cold, cynical level, that was amusing.  
  
“Yes. Yes, I did my job very well.” He was suddenly very close to her, his voice was husky. She took a quick breath, and smelled citrus, and ozone, and peat.   
  
His lips were as warm as she thought they’d be, and far softer than they looked. His arms circled her like steel bands, and she twisted her fingers into his hair, tugging harder than she’d meant. He didn’t seem to mind.  
  
***  
  
They needed only two shuffling steps to get to the low bunk against the wall; it wasn’t until she felt his weight settle over her that she realized they had lain down. His head bent to the open neck of her blouse, and as his tongue softly brushed the skin over her collarbone she felt--finally, finally--heat bloom inside her, chasing away the cold void that had been there for so long.   
  
He was whispering something indistinct against her skin as he unbuttoned her blouse and laid her bare. It sounded like “warm” and “alive” and it made her shiver, because he meant  _her_  --  _she_  was warm,  _she_  was alive, and she  _was_ , she remembered that now, and at least there was that.   
  
The skin at his temple where she pressed her lips was a bit cool, still, but his back, when she ran her hands up under his shirt, was almost hot to the touch, smooth and dry. She dug her nails in and arched her hips up to meet his and he shuddered and clutched her tightly. She could make out what he was saying now.  
  
“Warm, you’re so warm,” he kept saying.  
  
And she was.


End file.
